U.S.-Venezuela Relations After Chavez

Venezuela is the perfect breeding ground for populist, anti-American conspiracy theories. And once a conspiratorial, anti-American culture is fomented, it sets like concrete. Only genuine political reform in Venezuela will cure it, and I don’t expect that anytime soon.

Drezner could be right about that, but even in the absence of conspiracy theories I wouldn’t expect a dramatic change in Venezuela’s relations with the U.S. A relationship less defined by antagonism on both sides would be welcome, but after more than a decade of the current strained relationship Chavez’s allies and opponents probably feel no urgency to seek rapprochement with Washington. Chavez leaves behind a large number of supporters that have incentives to continue his policies and probably don’t see why they would change them, and to the extent that his allies share Chavez’s stated ideology they will try to keep conducting Venezuelan foreign policy as he did. Even if the opposition candidate had prevailed in the last election and Capriles were now president, there would not be much reason to expect a significant departure from Chavez’s foreign policy, at least not in the near term. Especially in a country with a political culture saturated with anti-imperialist and anti-American rhetoric, members of the political opposition are limited by their local foreign policy consensus, and reconciling with the U.S. is usually not a high priority for them (and why would it be?). Whenever there is an authoritarian regime opposed to the U.S. to whatever degree, many Americans make the mistake of assuming that the current leadership of that regime is the chief and sometimes only obstacle to good relations, but it is often the case that the authoritarian leadership profits from perpetuating a strained or hostile relationship because it is broadly popular to do so. Naturally, it doesn’t help the cause of improved relations with the U.S. when the last period of close relations is identified with earlier, widely-despised political leaders.

In the near term, Chavez’s would-be successors are probably going to be doing more to compete over who is best-suited to managing and/or improving upon his legacy rather than planning to throw out parts of it. Michael McCarthy outlines what can be expected from the forthcoming election campaign:

For Maduro, Chávez’s legacy is summed up in one word: patria (fatherland). If Maduro, a former union leader and then a loyal foreign minister in the previous government, follows the Chávez playbook in 2012’s elections, he will tamp down the Leftist discourse and situate his platform in the nationalist sentiments chavismo cultivates and deploys. This will include nationalism’s jingoistic side—depicting opponent Capriles as an inauthentic Venezuelan, a piti-yanqui.

For Capriles, the relevant part of the Chávez legacy is the social question. During the campaign, Capriles ran with a center-right party slate but as a center-left politician promoting a future of progress. He proposed deepening Chávez’s social policies, but still lacked populist credibility. After Chávez, will Capriles continue the same strategy or change gears? Can he frame Maduro, a man who lacks the charisma Chávez used so effectively to link nationalist and ideological rhetoric, as an out of touch bureaucrat?

I think that to some degree we’ll have to see what policy directions the new leaders take, and just as importantly, whether they engage in the same schoolyard antics to provoke the US as Chavez did. Here was never a threat to us and could just easily have been ignored for all the effect he had on us.

At the same time, we’ll have to see whether our own feckless leaders can recognize and respond to actual policy and whether they can, if it comes to it, decline to be provoked by posturing. This I doubt.

I think the posturing and provocation was purely Chavez himself, not his or his country’s ideology; a matter of personal style with the usual short-term low-grade benefits that grandstanding gets. As Daniel points out, the new crew has some actual work on their hands. So there will probably be a new and different stimulus for us to either respond or jerk our knees to.

My prediction: The new government will turn to, and take care of internal business, while avoiding Chavez’s trolling and grandstanding. They will have to move carefully on this due to economic alliances so this will mostly be a toning down of rhetoric rather than a walk-away from current trade and political partners. Folks in DC with time on their hands and a high willingness to be afraid or offended will either misread or ignore any such change, or possibly raise the bar so that the new regime is equally unacceptable, and maintain the current threat/pariah status.

The U.S. government has supported so many coups d’état and would-be coups – or played rough with countries economically any politically – over the last century that I don’t think “schoolyard antics,” “posturing and provocation, “personal style,” “trolling and grandstanding,” and “rhetoric” is a very reasonable explanation for the hysterical response of the American establishment towards Hugo Chavez. I mean, I know Castro and Lumumba had charisma, but did Mohammad Mossadegh, Jacobo Arbenz and Salvador Allende really drip with style and soar in rhetoric?

cka2nd: I think Mr Chavez’s behaviour is just the excuse that some in our government needed. He made it convenient for them by pushing their buttons so. It has nothing to do with how reasonable or unreasonable our response is. And again I predict that within six month, even if the new regime just vtakes care of business and does not push our buttons like Chavez did, we will still treat them as a threat.

I have found in my personal life that there are a lot of people with a very high willingness to be displeased, offended or angered. It appears to me that we have a lot of that type in office.

The desire for independence all has to do with one thing – that certain U.S. financial elites considered entire countries and their peoples subsidiaries, to be run as plantations, with local populations always violently suppressed by U.S. overseers.

That most-decorated U.S. Marine, General Smedley Butler, used to say that during his military tenure he was the chief enforcer for companies like United Fruit. Gen. Butler wrote that transparent expose of the causes for war and its purposes, from his inside vantage point as a high government official, “War Is A Racket” – and that the “banana republic” satrapy is an invention of the elites he served.

Butler was a real patriot, who was even solicited to lead a coup against the American democratic system by bankster interests in the thirties, instead courageously exposing and neutralizing it at great personal cost. Like General George Washington, he was appalled by contemplating any democratic revolution that would end in an aristocracy being established, even one in which he would be leader.

Chavez’s death is an excellent opportunity for the president to announce its eagerness for a reset button with Venezuela, whether or not our preferred leader is elected later. Even the GOP would find it hard to assail a general statement that we regret the past adversarial relationship, promise to stay out of electoral maneuvering in Venezuela, and intend to pursue a respectful, constructive relationship with whoever is elected there. This would not only be smart politically, it would also be helpful to U.S. interests. The sooner the better.